


Sleigh Bells Ring, Are You Listening?

by dullcevita



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, shane black would be proud of this christmas-set fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-05 19:15:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11584428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dullcevita/pseuds/dullcevita
Summary: Tony Stark returns from Afghanistan and goes into hiding. Steve Rogers wakes up from a coma and goes home. As it turns out, they make pretty bad neighbours. Also, it's Christmas.





	1. Jingle Bells

It's been over four months since Tony was rescued from Afghanistan, and he still can't sleep without nightmares. At home he'd thrash into wakefulness and JARVIS would turn on the lights and remind him of the time and his location, and he'd begin to calm down. Here, in New York, he trashes into wakefulness in the bitter dark of his new apartment. He's never lived in a place quite so small, and while it was quaint for the first week or so, that has quickly worn off. In its place is a dull hatred of the place, the whole damnable building, his new prison. Locked away in a cave, then a small stopover at home and now this, locked away in a whole _dwelling_ smaller than his workshop. So when he wakes here, he's terrified, but his anger and bitterness soon takes over, and by the time he's pulling himself out of bed and into the adjoining living room to weld something together he already feels better. In some ways, he supposes that it's not too different than what he'd be doing back in Malibu.

He checks the clock on the microwave, glowing dully and reflecting around the room off of the metal something-or-other in the middle of the room. Even Tony's not quite sure what it's going to be. Armour? Man-shaped panic room? He'll get there. With a sigh, he flicks the light-switch on, his living room cum workshop illuminated by the warm Edison bulbs hanging above, and queues up his playlist on his iPod. It’s almost Christmas, and that means the perfect mix of old and new, originals and remixes. He’s almost lost himself in the work, in the combination of sounds both mechanical and musical when he hears a loud knock at his door.

No one knocks on his door, except for the food delivery people, and by this time they know to just knock and then leave his food. They don’t knock insistently, and they certainly don’t _keep on knocking_ while Tony is _trying to **work**_. Finally, he can’t stand it anymore, and he shuts off his acetylene torch and pulls off his gloves and goggles. There’s a second where he considers pausing his music, but the bass is just about to drop in one of his favourite ‘Let it Snow’ remixes, and all he wants to do is send whoever is on the other side of his door packing.

“Yes?” He asks, pulling open the door as far as the chain allows. The person on the other side is a man, tall, blond, and sleep-ruffled. “Who the hell are you?” The man opens his mouth as if to say something, and then is overtaken by a long yawn.

“Steve.” The man replies, and he sounds sincerely apologetic. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to sleep, it’s been a stressful day and I need to –– ” Tony holds up a hand.

“Look, this tactic is good, I’ll give you that,” He says, motioning from the pyjama pants (tiny white stars against navy blue) to the face (nearly comical levels of tragic). “but it’s not going to work, and you don’t live here, so you can go shove it. I’m busy.” He’s about to close the door when ‘Steve’ very boldly shoves a hand in between the door and the frame.

“I don’t know what you mean by tactic, but I do live here.” Steve says, and motions to the door directly across the hall from Tony, 5A. “I just got back today, but that’s my apartment.”

Tony narrows his eyes. “Got back from where?” He asks suspiciously. Steve holds up the hand not jammed in Tony’s door so the other man can read the white band around his wrist. It’s a standard hospital bracelet, though it looks older than any of the ones Tony has had stuck on him, that reveals that ‘Steve’ is Rogers, Steven G., born July 4th, 1988. Christ, the guy’s a baby, a baby in star-spangled pyjama pants, who just got out of hospital —

“I’ve been living here for _four months_ , and I may keep to myself but I’m not exactly a hermit, and I certainly would’ve noticed if there was a whole other person living on the same floor as me,” he actually might not’ve, but it’s a moot point. “so what exactly were you doing in the hospital for four months?” Steve looks even more uncomfortable, though marginally more awake, and he scratches the back of his neck with his free hand –– he still hasn’t pulled his other back, and Tony is fairly nervous to try to shut it on his hand. He saw a film once where someone had their finger cut off like that, and he’d really prefer not to have to return to the press under the headline ‘STARK SEVERS FINGERS, RE-HOSPITALIZES RECENTLY RELEASED NEIGHBOUR’.

“Seven years, actually.” Steve says, and Tony just gapes at him, then recomposes himself.

“I’m sorry, did you just say _seven years_? As in seven years, seven _whole_ years? What were you, cryogenically frozen? Should I be calling you Austin Powers?” Steve’s face scrunches up.

“Who?”

Tony rolls his eyes. “Nice try, but that movie came out in ’97.”

“Sure, but I was _nine_ in ’97.”

Tony runs a hand down his face. “You’re literally a baby.” He murmurs between his fingers. “You’re a baby who’s been in the hospital for seven years.” — “Actually, yes, back to that: why were you in the hospital for seven years?”

Steve looks about ready to stomp his feet and then collapse onto the floor. “Do I have to answer this, or can you just be quieter?” Tony gives him a look like he’s considering the question for less than a quarter of a second before launching straight on.

“Yes, and no. Answer the question, star-pants, or I’m closing the door on your fingers and turning up Joe Williams.” Tony leans against the frame, one hand hovering above the door-knob somewhat threateningly. Steve opens his mouth and then closes it, before gritting his teeth and stomping off into his apartment, slamming the door behind him. Tony waits a half-moment before he calls out “a little quieter, people are trying to sleep!” in what could almost be described as a sing-song. If Steve yells back a very sleep-deprived ‘fuck you!’, Tony doesn’t hear it over Santa Baby, which he has just cranked as loud as his speakers will allow.

It takes eighteen nights of this before Tony gets another late night visit from Steve, who is looking less apologetic and more pissed off. He jams his hand in the door straight away this time, and though Tony reminds himself he can always just shut the door on his fingers, the way Steve’s arms fill out his t-shirt makes him think he might not have an easy a time of it as he’d like.

“Do you ever sleep?” Steve asks right away. Tony shrugs. He’s been awake for three straight days now, which has probably only exacerbated the Steve situation. Before it was usually only midnight to seven am that were loud workshop times in the night. Now it’s pretty much always.

Tony needs something to do with his time, and he can’t leave, and he can’t sleep, and there are only so many hours of television he can watch before he starts getting twitchy. Work is what keeps him from going stir crazy, and Steve is not going to take that away from him. Tony doesn’t care how little sleep Steve might be getting, because Steve can always move. It took a lot of set-up to find this building, to instal Stark employees as the rest of the tenants, to make sure that press never found out where he was staying, and Tony is not letting this _fluke_ ruin it.

“Less than you,” he replies, though as he notices the dark bags underneath Steve’s eyes, he goes on: “though maybe you’re catching up.” Steve looks about ready to murder for sleep, which is a place Tony has been to many, many times, and so can recognize it with relative ease. “Look, just go somewhere else. Get a hotel. I’ll give you cash.” He was already paying everyone else in this building, he may as well just try to fix this problem in the easiest way possible.

Far from seeming grateful or even thoughtful, Steve gets angrier. “This is my home.” He says. “I’m staying here. Why don’t _you_ leave?” Tony fakes consideration for a brief moment, then replies:

“Yeah, no, this is your problem, so I’m not really going to go out of my way to fix it. Now if you would kindly,” He says, then grunts with effort as he tries to loosen Steve’s grip on his doorframe. “get your appendages out of my apartment, I’ve got things to do.” For a guy who’s literally holding on by his fingertips, Steve’s got a freakishly good grip. He’d be the guy to call for those scenes in movies where people are hanging from a cliff, though none of that makes his lack of movement from Tony’s doorframe any more endearing. With a sigh of exertion Tony leaves the door and returns to the living room, picking up his torch and gloves and already half turned around when a ripping noise makes him turn to see that Steve has forced his door open, tearing the metal bar right out of the wall.

They both meet each other’s gaze at the same time, having reevaluated the situation. Unsurprisingly, it’s Tony who finds his voice first.

“You broke my door!” He says, almost in shock.

“You were going to torch my hand?” Steve’s voice is as shocked as Tony’s, but there’s also an element of genuine hurt in it.

“I’m _**sorry**_ , but you **broke** my **door**. You broke my door! Who does that? What are you, some kind of drugged-up — ”

“Were you genuinely going to use that on my hand? That’s inhumane, that’s honestly one of the most fucked up things I’ve ever seen, — ”

“Oh my **god** , I was just going to threaten you with the torch, and I didn’t actually do it yet but you seem to have forgotten that **_you broke my fucking door!_** You broke into my apartment!”

Steve opens his mouth to protest, then looks back at the door, where the broken chain is hanging limply like a dead thing. He looks back to Tony, and sighs. “Whatever,” he says bitterly, and turns to leave, before he turns back around like he’s just realized what happened.

“I’m sorry about the door.” He says. “But please, could you be quieter?” Before Tony can say anything, he’s back out the door and across the hall to his own apartment. Tony shuts the door and pulls the chain from the track, throwing the chain and the hunk of drywall and plaster it’s attached to into the trash. He turns his music on and goes back to welding, but his music is slightly more quiet. Across the hall, Steve covers his head with a pillow and falls asleep, completely exhausted.

The next morning he’s sitting across from Natasha in her favourite café and she’s grinning ear to ear, something that is utterly inappropriate given the conversation they’ve been having.

“You ripped his door off the wall?” She says, and Steve narrows his eyes at her in confusion.

“What? No, I ripped the door _chain_ off the wall.” He says, and she nods, though he can tell that she would’ve much rather kept with the other version of events.

“Well, it sounds like he deserved it.” She says, leaning back in her chair and sipping at an iced latte. He’s always admired and feared her conviction. When he went under she was 18 and one of his most promising soldiers. Now, she’s turning 26 and is on some sort of high-level security team, Strategic Homeland something-or-other. “I want to meet him.” She goes on, and Steve blanches. He may dislike 5B, but he doesn’t dislike him _that much._

“As much as I appreciate the offer, I just want him quieter, not dead or suing me for having him threatened.” Steve says, and Natasha shrugs. “But I wouldn’t be adverse to advice?” She leans forwards in her chair.

“I’m guessing you’re against _actually_ tearing his door off the wall?” Steve gives her a look. “Right. And talking with him apparently did shit all, so you’re really only left with three options. You can force him to stop, you can move, or you can put up with it.” Steve clenches his jaw at the idea of moving out, and Natasha gives him a soft, sympathetic smile. The rare kind.

“Look, I’d say either you blackmail him or you get used to it. Maybe invest in some earplugs.” She makes a noise, like she’s just remembered something. “You said he offered to pay you off — see if he’ll buy you some really high quality earplugs or something.” Steve nods.

“It’s worth a try.” He says, and takes another tentative sip of his latte. Seven years in bed didn’t do anything to his tastebuds, apparently, and he still hates coffee. And lettuce.

Natasha leans across the table to give Steve’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “You know, you can always crash at my place if you need to.” He smiles back at her but shakes his head. Natasha’s place is a loft apartment she shares with a fellow special forces type, Clint, who rarely leaves his loft. It’s crowded enough without adding Steve.

“Thanks, but I’ll figure this out. I have to.” Steve sighs, then gives Natasha a wan smile. “And he can’t stay awake forever. He’s got to go to bed at some point.”

That point, it turned out, is the next night. The music is on, Christmas once again, but when Steve knocks he gets no response. Assuming that he’s being ignored he forces the lock on the door, accidentally shattering the wood around it, only to find that he wasn’t hearing anything from 5B because 5B is currently passed out on at his kitchen island, welding goggles marking lines into his forehead and a half-empty glass of scotch near his elbow. Steve tiptoes in and turns off the music, and is halfway to the door when he turns back around. Asleep, 5B is almost peaceful, and Steve feels a sudden twinge of guilt when he realized that he’d basically rendered his apartment unlockable.

Steve is so deeply asleep that he doesn’t hear the loud yelling when Tony finally wakes up and finds that his doorknob is basically hanging onto the rest of the door by a few long splinters, but he does notice the piece of paper that has been shoved under his door, reading: ‘we need to talk about property damage, pronto’, and then signed ‘Tony’. At least now he has a name to put to the annoyance: Tony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If this seems at all familiar that's because it is — I posted it to another account a while back, and I believe I deleted it & my account for... some reason. I'll be making edits as I go along, so this might be a different fic to the one you remember (if you read it when I first shot it off into the void of the internet). 
> 
> Recommended listening for the whole fic: Merry Mixmas: Christmas Classics Remixed


	2. Chapter 2

Despite the note, Steve doesn’t see Tony for the next week, though he does _hear_  him. It takes every ounce of his self-control not to walk over there and just shove the door open, because, as he’s noticed every time he’s stepped out to meet Natasha or go for a run, Tony’s door is still hopelessly broken. While on his morning run he considers what Natasha had mentioned the week prior about just taking the door off of its hinges. He’s fairly sure he could, if he got a good grip. Thank god for physiotherapy.

Natasha has, in general, been a life-saver for him. She was the one who kept renting his apartment while he was out cold, and she was the one, the only one, who never gave up on him. She knew he would wake up again. She knew he had to. And then he had, and she’d been right there at his side, grinning so widely that at first he couldn’t tell that she was on the verge of crying. “Welcome back to the land of the living, Cap.” She’d said, before hugging him tightly enough that a nurse had to usher her away.

Waking up like that, after so many years of being asleep, had left him both weakened and confused. The good news was that it seemed he’d finally hit puberty — when he’d enlisted he’d been 5’4” and just over 110 pounds, barely scraping past the military’s requirements, and upon waking up he found himself well over 6’ — which he had at once point assumed was just not going to happen, but even this had had a downside. Along with having limited control of his limbs for the first few months, he also had no real concept of just how tall he was, or how long his limbs were. As he worked with his physical therapist, and Natasha, who’d insisted on showing up to help, he’d gained more muscle than he’d ever had before going into the coma.

His metabolism had always been high, but he’d been scrawny before instead of muscular. Now, his body just seemed to naturally gain muscle without much effort. In time, Natasha and his rotation of physical therapists, nurses, and personal trainers had managed to get him back to the point where he felt fine, though Natasha had complained that she’d preferred pre-physical therapy Steve, because at least he couldn’t outrun her.

All in all, the road to recovery wasn’t as painful as it could’ve been, and he thanked Natasha for that. Right up until the end, when she’d taken him and his backpack of things back to the apartment he hadn’t seen in more than a decade. She’d walked him up, and given him a quick kiss on the cheek and made him promise to call if he needed anything, before turning and heading back down the stairs. Steve had sighed, hoisted his bag onto his shoulder and entered his apartment.

It had been his childhood home, and though he didn’t have endlessly fond memories of the place, it was his _only_ home. He’d been just about settled in when the noise began, and that, of course, is how he met Tony.

Currently, he goes for a run in the morning. How long he’s out for depends on his mood and his energy levels, but with better ear-plugs he’s actually been able to sleep over the last week, so his runs are getting longer and longer. In the end he goes for close to twenty miles, before he realizes that he’s so exhausted that he just takes the subway back to his apartment. Walking up the stairs, soaked in sweat and still panting slightly, he notices Tony, outside of his apartment.

Since he’s been back, which has been almost a month now, he’s never seen Tony leave. People come and deliver things to him –– food in paper bags, metal and tools in large cloth ones –– and one tall redhead stops by, apparently just to argue with him, but he never leaves. Yet, here he is, sitting on the floor and trying to fix the doorknob. Steve pauses at the top of the last step, and decides it’ll be more awkward if he doesn’t say anything.

“I _am_ sorry about that,” he says. Tony turns his head and gives Steve a once over, before shrugging and turning back around to continue his work. “I could help you, if you wanted?”

The look Tony gives him is both condescending and annoyed. “Really,” He asks, raising his eyebrows at Steve. Steve nods, and Tony pulls himself to his feet, his knees cracking slightly as they straighten out for the first time in almost an hour. “Look, He-Man, as much as I appreciate the offer,” they can both tell he really, really doesn’t. “I’ve got this covered. We do need to talk about this, though.”

Steve looks down at his feet, and Tony splutters for a half-moment. “Are you —? Are you _genuinely_ sulking? Look, kid, I’m not mad anymore. Sure, you went all _Hawaii Five-O_ on my door. Was it excessive? Yes, but am I mad about it anymore?” He pulls a face that suggests he might still be a tiny bit mad. “Anyways, on to bigger and better things: why can’t you move out?”

Steve opens his mouth and then Tony holds up his hand to silence him as he seems to work through something. “Wait, no, you’re military, right?” Steve looks confused, and so Tony just rolls on. “I looked into it: we couldn’t evict you is because your apartment’s being paid for by the government, and trying to fight them for it would be a nightmare, which would probably result in my getting outed, and that’d be even worse and Pep’d never let me hear the end of it. But, it makes sense. You’re military of some kind.” Steve looks even more confused.

“Outed?” He asks, and Tony pauses whatever train of thought he was on and nods.

“Yeah, you know, I’m surprised you haven’t tipped the press off yourself.” He almost mutters that last bit to himself, but Steve hears it anyways and starts to put it together.

“Are you famous?” He asks. Tony snorts, then sobers his expression when he realizes that Steve isn’t joking.

“Holy shit, where have you been?” He asks, and before he can go on Steve answers his rhetorical question with:

“Afghanistan from 2005 up until 2008, and then the hospital.” Tony bristles at the mention of Afghanistan, but the math is still obvious. When Steve went to war, Tony was 31. He was in the press, but not the kind of press Steve probably would’ve been reading at that time. For Christ’s sake, Steve probably went straight from high school into the army. And then straight from the army into some hospital. In the back of his mind, Tony hopes that it wasn’t Stark Tech that put him there.

“Okay, so,” Tony begins, then stops. He can’t evict him. He can’t force him to be okay with it, as much as he’d like to try. And what other options does he have? Steve clears his throat and speaks up before Tony can come to some conclusion.

“What about a compromise?” He asks, and Tony raises an eyebrow at him. “Is there a way to make the noise less noticeable? We could try to —” Before he can even finish his thought, Tony shoves his door back open, ignoring the fact that the doorknob falls right out of the door with a whole chunk of wood attached, returning to his apartment. Inside, he pulls open the kitchen cabinets, digging through stacks of paper for that binder he knows is somewhere in there.

Outside, Steve waits for a moment to see if Tony is going to come back, and when he doesn't he picks the knob up and follows Tony into the apartment. Despite having been inside before, he’d been distracted that this is the first time he’s had a proper look. Even though it should be the exact mirror image of his apartment, the two places couldn’t be more different. Tony has removed all the furniture from the living room, replacing it with metal tables piled high with what looks like machinery and scrap to him, and there are scorch marks on the wall nearest to the tables.

Tony re-emerges from the kitchen with a plastic binder of papers and flips it open. “I have an idea,” he says, and Steve can see the switch from Tony in the hall to Tony in his workshop. Tony at work is focused, singleminded, and currently rattling off figures and facts that Steve would never be able to keep up with, let alone comprehend. In the end, what he’s able to grasp from the wall of information Tony hits him with is that there’s going to be an effort to soundproof and convert Tony’s apartment for the long term, but for the short term —

“Here,” Tony says, handing over a set of earplugs that seem like a hard plastic but, when Steve gives them a tentative squeeze at Tony’s request, form to his hands so closely that when he looks again they have fingerprints. “it’s a hard shape-memory polymer, and about 80% safe to have in your ears, but it completely blocks out sound. I used to use them to nap on airplanes.” Steve nods and takes them and the small bag Tony offers for them, sets the doorknob down on Tony's kitchen counter, and they part ways as something more neutral than friends, but less neutral than enemies.

Steve is describing the earplugs to Natasha the next morning, because she’s decided to come along with him on his run, and she stops all of a sudden, holding a hand up to him. He stops but remains bouncing in motion until she gives him a long look and he remembers that she hates when runners do that, and they both amble over to a bench.

“Describe them again?” She asks, and she’s suddenly serious. He does, down to the colour and size, and then when she offers a pen and paper from her back-pocket he sketches them. She turns his sketch around, her frown getting deeper and deeper until she looks back up at him.

“What did you say his name was?” She asks.

“I didn’t, I only learned it a little while ago.” He says, and when she continues staring he goes on. “It’s Tony.” Natasha seems to clench her jaw, looking down at the small sketch again.

“Is there anything unusual about him?” She asks. Steve bites back a laugh, because there’s almost nothing that’s not.

“Well, aside from the being up all hours of the night and the blaring Christmas music, when he gave me these,” he motions at the sketch. “I got to see his apartment, and it’s more like a garage than anything else. He’s some kind of mechanic, I guess…” Natasha mouth is pressed into a thin line, an expression that Steve hasn’t seen since they were still in a combat zone. He wracks his brain for anything else. “He might be famous and hiding, too.”

“He said that?” She demands, and he tries to remember the wording.

“Not exactly, but he said he didn’t want the press to find him, and that I should know who he was.” He frowns. “Is something wrong, Natasha? Is he some kind of criminal?”

She shrugs, then cracks her neck. “That depends on who you ask.” She mutters semi-sarcastically, though when she catches Steve’s nervous expression she explains. “He’s Tony Stark. He’s a billionaire who used to run a weapon’s company. Now, he’s a billionaire in hiding whose personal assistant runs a weapon’s company that doesn’t make weapons.” Steve almost bites his lip in surprise. He actually has heard of Tony Stark — he was in the army, after all — but that was years ago, after Tony had taken over the company and then again when he started making newer, more intelligent weapons.

“Why’s he in hiding?” He asks, after he’s taken a moment to process the information he already has. Natasha already seems to be thinking about something else, but she turns back to face him and replies.

“He found that his weapons were in enemy hands, so he dropped out of the business. His stock dropped so much that his assistant and him decided it would be best for him to be out of the public eye entirely. And now,” She pauses, and gives him a small grin. “he’s hiding out across the hall from you, blasting Christmas music at 3am.”

Steve chews a his lip for another half-moment, then turns to face Natasha again. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?” He asks, and he looks so honestly upset by the notion that she can’t bring herself to say anything other than ‘no’. Steve nods, and they start running again, Natasha trailing very slightly behind so she can think over her plan without Steve evaluating her expression.

They’re nearing the end of their run when Natasha pulls him to a stop again, though this time because she’s getting to be out of breath. “Do you want to come by for dinner?” She asks, crouching slightly to brace herself against a low wall as she calms her breathing. Steve, who’s sweating but little else, takes a moment to stretch and then replies.

“Sure. Is Clint going to be there?” He asks, and she looks up at him and smirks.

“Why, are you _jealous_?” She teases, and he gives her a light shove.

“No, but it’s always awkward in groups of three.” He says. Natasha considers for a moment as she pulls her hair up and away from her neck, tying it back into a messy ballet bun.

“Another friend from work is in town,” she says. “I could invite him.” Steve weighs a dinner with two people who are roommates and friends against three people, one of whom he doesn’t know, and picks the latter.

“Sure, invite him.” He says, and they walk the rest of the way to the subway station.

He’s hung out with Natasha often enough that minutes after they get in the door she’s handing him a pile of his clothing and directing him to the shower, before gets on the phone to call and invite her work friend to dinner. Dinner is something Italian, made by Clint who is a surprisingly good cook, and the guest is one Dr. Bruce Banner, who’s in town as a guest lecturer at Columbia.

“So how do you and Natasha work together?” Steve asks, a few minutes into the meal, and suddenly the room is tense — except for Dr. Banner, who seems to have a sort of eternal chill about him. He glances over at Natasha and gives her a ‘ _really_?’ sort of look before he replies.

“I’m helping develop a tracking system for her employers.” He says, and then when he sees Steve’s look, he goes on. “Natasha has been something of a liaison between me and her employers. I don’t do well,” he pauses, and something in his expression makes Steve thing that’s an understatement. “with certain environments, especially military, so she brings me things from them and brings them things from me. She keeps it all rolling smoothly.” Bruce shoots a quick smile across the table at Natasha, and her frown lifts slightly. “She’s been a lifesaver. Sometimes literally.”

Steve can’t help but smile at Natasha as well, who is actually beginning to go very slightly pink, and Clint notices this and teases her mercilessly about it for the rest of the evening. The dinner is calm, and Steve at regular intervals finds himself feeling less and less like he lost something irreplaceable. While Natasha and Clint are bickering amicably over the dishes, Bruce and Steve wander outside.

“So what kind of doctor are you?” Steve asks, and Bruce laughs, running a hand through his grey-streaked curls.

“I’m a Biochemist and Nuclear Physicist, technically.” He replies. “Though these days I lecture more about general physics and mathematics than anything else. It’s soothing. Back to basics.” Steve nods, though he barely can comprehend how that would be ‘back to basics’. For someone like Tony, maybe. Thinking about it, he begins to wonder.

“How much do you know about Tony Stark?” He asks, and Bruce seems surprised by the question, though he does answer.

“He’s ingenious.” Bruce starts. “But he’s got a bit of a reputation. He went into hiding a few months ago, though I think I remember hearing that it had something to do with him deciding not to make weapons anymore.” Bruce leans forwards against the porch railing and looks out into the night, as if looking for something far away. “I think that’s a good call. A lot of people have died because of Tony Stark. But that’s science.” In the corner of his vision he sees the look Steve is giving him, and he straightens up.

“You think you’re doing something for the greater good, and then it turns out to be something else. I was part of a research team, and we thought we were developing something that would change the world. As it turned out, it was military technology, and it did. At least, a small part of the world.” Bruce takes a quick moment before he seems to shake the gloom from his shoulders. “But, if he’s decided to give it up then I think that’s good for him. He got out when he still had the chance.”

Steve thinks back to what Natasha had said. “But it took finding his weapons in enemy hands for him to change his mind.” He says, as though trying to poke holes in the other’s argument. Bruce makes a considering noise and turned around to properly face Steve.

“Wake up calls come in all forms.” He says. “For some of us, it’s a person.” He nods to Natasha and Clint, now engaged in a water fight that neither seems to care about winning. “For some of us, it’s a grenade.” A pointed look at Steve. “If Tony’s wake up call was finding out that someone had been double dealing, then so be it. He knows now, and all he can do is look forwards.” The two men stand side by side, watching Natasha and Clint through the window. After a moment of silence, Steve sighs.

“I guess that's all any of us can do.” He says, and in his peripheral vision he can see Bruce nodding, very slightly.


End file.
